cking them up,
as they did each fall, to show their authority. Blanchard relieved him
of his task and he came downstairs mopping his brow. Then we went to
work and planned details until midnight. It was to be the plot of the
century and every wheel had to mesh.

We spent the next day in a cold perspiration. Neither Alfalfa Delt nor
Chi Yi paraded any pledged Freshmen. They were still hunting for the
right Smith, too--evidently. They fell for the Smith Club plan with such
suspicious eagerness that it was plain each bunch had some nasty,
low-lived scheme up its sleeves. We were righteously indignant. It was
our game and they ought not to butt in. But Maxwell only smiled. He was
a Napoleon, that boy was. He just waved us aside. "I'll run this little
thing the way we do at Muggledorfer," he explained. "You fellows can
play a few lines of football pretty well, but when it comes to
surrounding a Freshman and making a Greek out of him, I wouldn't take
lessons from old Ulysses himself." And so we left him alone and held
each other's hands and smoked and cussed--and hoped and hoped and hoped.

Maxwell went after the three Smiths himself that night. He had taken a
room in an out-of-the-way part of town and his plan was to take them
over there after the meeting to discuss the future good of the Smith
Club. Then about a dozen of us would slide gently over there--and a
curtain would have to be drawn over the woe that would ensue for the
other gangs. Meanwhile, all we had to do was to sit around the house and
gnaw our fingers. Maxwell called for our Smith last and he had the other
two in tow. Oh, no; we didn't invite them in. Two Alfalfa Delts and
three Chi Yis were sitting on our porch, visiting us. Three Chi Yis and
two Eta Bita Pies were sitting on the Alfalfa Delt porch. Four Eta
Bites and two Alfalfa Delts were calling on the Chi Yi house. It was a
critical moment and none of us was taking chances. We couldn't keep our
Smiths from wandering, but we could make sure they didn't wander into
the wrong place.

Maxwell led his flock of Smiths away and we all sat and talked to each
other in little short bites. The Chi Yis were nervous as rabbits. They
looked at their watches every five minutes. The Alfalfa Delts listened
to us with one ear and swept the other around the gloom. The night was
charged with plots. Innumerable things seemed trembling in the immediate
future. When the visitors excused themselves a little later, and went
a